Hampton to end donation to Crossroads?

Town not happy with new state system

HAMPTON — The Board of Selectmen may not offer a warrant article to help fund the Crossroads House transitional shelter in Portsmouth next year after learning that Hampton will no longer be able to directly place its residents in need of emergency housing there.

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By Nick B. Reid

seacoastonline.com

By Nick B. Reid

Posted Dec. 3, 2013 at 2:00 AM

By Nick B. Reid
Posted Dec. 3, 2013 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

HAMPTON — The Board of Selectmen may not offer a warrant article to help fund the Crossroads House transitional shelter in Portsmouth next year after learning that Hampton will no longer be able to directly place its residents in need of emergency housing there.

Town Manager Fred Welch said the state is working on a new system wherein the town would call in its needs for emergency housing to a "dispatcher," and the people in need would then be placed at a shelter in or around Rockingham County, with the intent to find a place that specializes in solving that person's particular problem.

In the past, Welch said, when a person arrived needing emergency housing, the town would call Crossroads and work directly with that organization to meet the person's needs, and because of that, the town has historically offered a warrant article for $15,000 to help fund Crossroads. But under the new state plan, everything would go through a third party.

"When we have someone come into the town hall we can no longer call any of the places that we've called before — in particular, Crossroads, which is our particular place for housing people who need emergency housing," Welch said at a discussion of proposed 2014 warrant articles with selectmen on Nov. 22. "The primary recipients going to Crossroads are going to be people from Dover, as I understand, so we're going to be shipping them farther and farther and farther away to other facilities."

Welch said there were a number of other places in the area, including a few just over the border in Massachusetts and others farther west in New Hampshire, that would likely receive those in need of emergency housing.

"We try to find places where they can receive specialty services for the particular problem they're having so we can get them back into society on an even keel," Welch said.

But even still, Welch said he'd prefer to continue partnering with Crossroads. He said the town is "still dickering" with that shelter in hopes that it may be able to continue as it has in the past.

"We'll try to make it so it stays the same," he said.

But if he can't, he said he'd recommend removing the article to fund Crossroads from next year's warrant. The board agreed that it would follow Welch's recommendation and authorized him to communicate its intention back to Crossroads, in hopes that a compromise can be made.